On This Date in 1998

Only the stubbornest of leaves remained on the trees by Thursday. We had two days of very intense wind, enough to blow down trees, tip over semis, and cancel a West Middleton 5th grade field trip to Chicago. The weather is responsible for a great mystery as far as I’m concerned. Where did all the leaves go? Monday afternoon, before the big blow arrived, the portion of our driveway where I park the car was covered with leaves, and, even though we had raked the previous weekend, a fair number of leaves had once again settled on the front lawn. Mother Nature acted like a vacuum on Tuesday and Wednesday. Not only our yard but everyone else’s seemed to be swept clean. The back half of the open lot next to us had been a carpet of yellow and brown silver maple leaves. By Thursday morning, they had all vanished, except for those caught in the chain-link fence. Our front yard looked ready for spring fertilizing, as does everyone else’s in our neighborhood. The leaves couldn’t have just disappeared. Some folks in Middleton must have looked out their windows this morning with great consternation. Or maybe they all blew up to Two Rivers.

Thursday was a beautiful day. By early afternoon, the sky was clear and the air was calm. I walked home for lunch, ignoring the short list of groceries I was going to drive to Sentry to buy. I figured there was still enough lunch meat in the refrigerator for one more sandwich. And I was right. I was able to recharge myself for the rest of the workday.

Andy made the Tri-County 5th grade basketball team, one of ten boys selected out of the 22 who tried out. Almost half the guys are from his soccer and baseball and football teams this year. Ross, Johnny, Drew, Riley. The coach, John Strnad, was Andy’s soccer coach for 5 years, from kindergarten through 4th grade. The team had its first practice Wednesday evening and will practice for 90 minutes twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, between now and the end of the year. Their schedule of games, two per weekend, begins in January and runs through most of March, probably ending right before spring break.

Andy started to lose his little jelly belly and get a little beefier in the chest, as you noticed, during football season. Considering all the exercise he’ll be getting this winter, he’ll be in great shape by the start of soccer season. Running would be good exercise for Andy, but it’s an activity that he dislikes, based on his reaction to having to run the mile during gym class in school. Eddie received his report card last Friday. He seems to be doing quite well in second grade so far. His teachers are very pleased with his overall effort. The special education classes have allowed him to make some very noticeable improvement in his reading skills. He has homework (word recognition, spelling, and reading assignments) every night, and JoAnna and I work very closely with him. Andy gets his report card today. Based on the work he brings home, I think we’ll be pleased with the results, but I know that there is going to be room for improvement. Andy certainly has the ability to get straight A’s – his teachers at Elm Lawn have consistently told us that he doesn’t work up to his full potential – but he’s content to give his schoolwork a “B” effort. JoAnna and I don’t harass him about his grades. I’m sure my wife was more competitive gradewise, but I, too, was usually content to settle for a “B”, not driven to sacrifice other activities to achieve straight A’s. As I have come to realize, the grades you earn in school are only a small part of the picture as far as determining success in life. What I want Andy and Eddie to appreciate is that learning is a lifelong experience; it doesn’t end when you are out of school. (Sounds like a librarian talking, huh?)

JoAnna is still catching up on all the sleep she lost during the long election campaign. Last night, she wrapped herself in a blanket and watched TV while lying on our bed. I checked in on her a few minutes after.   Frasier was playing to an empty house. JoAnna was sleeping peacefully, obviously to Kelsey Grammar’s and David Hyde Pierce’s nattering. (I’ve always thought that Frasier was a more tolerable character in a supporting role on Cheers.) Shortly after 8:30, she wandered from the bedroom to the kitchen, the blanket still wrapped around her.

“I’m going to bed,” she informed me, as if I didn’t already know the direction in which her evening was heading. “I’m sorry,” she said at least three times as I escorted her back to the bedroom.

“There’s nothing to apologize about. You deserve to take it easy. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get the boys to bed and then I’m going to read for awhile.”



She was actually awake when I went to bed at 10:00. I tuned in a showing of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on the American Movie Channel. I listened to the recorded book version a couple months ago and really enjoyed it. Jo lasted through the first 10 minutes of the movie, and I must have dozed off a couple times during the hour that I tried to stay awake. I found the pace a little plodding.

Hope this letter finds both of you doing well. We send you our love.

On This Date in 1998

At 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning, the house is eerily quiet, at least until a tape on which I recorded Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue rewinds. JoAnna went to her office and won’t be home until 6:00. I gave the boys money to go bowling, the Sport Bowl being just a short walk from the house. Andy’s friend Matt dropped by at quarter to ten. He and Andy played a raucous game of rug hockey in the family room until JoAnna returned home from church. She fixed herself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, and even though Andy had recently devoured a serving of syrup-drenched pancakes, and Matt had eaten before the left his house, the boys fixed themselves what JoAnna was eating. I haven’t even had my usual 8 sections of grapefruit yet; a half-glass of apple cider has been my only nourishment so far today.

Eddie and I enjoyed a quiet, pleasant, relaxing Friday evening together. We sat on the couch in the family room, a bowl of popcorn between us. He watched the Cartoon Network while I read. I was intrigued by this cable channel’s approach to programming. They don’t simply throw, willy-nilly, three cartoons into a half-hour time slot. Friday evening featured three Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons directed by Tex Avery, a filmmaker whom most animation aficionados would place in the pantheon of auteurs, along with Friz Freleng (Bugs Bunny) and Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker). (The auteur theory, by the way, is a view of filmmaking, usually associated with live-action films, with directors like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford and Martin Scorcese, in which the director is considered the primary creative force.)



Eddie, of course, is not watching these cartoons at the same level that I am, my point of view refined over 40 years of fascination with popular culture. I’m sure that he’s as discerning a viewer, though. My guess is that Eddie is not so much interested in the cartoon’s storyline as he is in the – and here I’m going to throw another French film term at you – mise-en-scene (pronounced MEEZ-ahn sane), the physical setting of the action. Eddie has created this huge file of mental images that he effortlessly riffles through whenever he sits at his drafting table and begins a new drawing.

We took two vehicles to get to Andy’s football game yesterday morning. Andy had to be at the field 45 minutes before the 10:30 kickoff time. If we all drove together, Eddie would get bored and in a complaining mood by game time. The Weather Channel predicted scattered showers (my emphasis), and with the sksy looking overcast but not anywhere near threatening, I left the house wearing jeans and a short-sleeve t-shirt. At the end of the first quarter, we heard a single clap of thunder and saw a flash of lightning. A light rain began to fall. I thought the game might be delayed, but the thunder and lightning went away, as if God had immediately answered the coaches’ and parents’ prayers. During much of the second and third quarters, the Orioles played in a driving rain. I mean, it poured! Fortunately, JoAnna had brought along an umbrella and a poncho, and offered me the latter, so I was able to keep dry above the knees. Eddie wore a windbreaker without a hood. He and his friend Garrett enjoyed themselves for awhile, but the brisk wind was probably bringing on a case of hypothermia. Eddie was soaked from head to toe. When he pleaded to go home, JoAnna was happy to oblige.

The Orioles got trounced, 39-0. From start to finish, the team looked disorganized and mostly disinterested on both offense and defense. This was their 6th loss without a win. I think the team lost its spirit before the end of the 1st quarter, as if someone had suddenly popped the balloon of their hopes for a 1st victory. JoAnna and I aren’t sure if it’s a collective lack of talent or poor coaching. Andy still seems to enjoy the experience, though. He hasn’t made any negative comments or tried to weasel out of going to practice.

Andy had only 15 minutes to get ready for Tim’s birthday party. Tim and Andy became good friends in the 3rd grade, a relationship that cooled a bit during 4th grade, but now seems to be warming up again. Tim lives with his dad and stepmom in Middleton during the week and with his mom and stepdad in Verona on the weekends. The party, of course, was in Verona, which is a 15-minute drive from Middleton. On the way home, I stopped at Cub Foods and made a major purchase of groceries. The West Towne area was clogged with traffic, most of the western half of Dane County deciding that shopping was the best way to spend a rainy day. Andy heavy rains continued into the late afternoon.

We hosted a sheepshead party Saturday evening. Jon and Kathy Erpenbach brought along their two children, Joey, 6, and Amy, 3. They get along so well with Andy and Eddie. Some of JoAnna’s staff members showed up: Julie (and her husband, Ron), Emily, Jen, as well as two other Capitol people (legislative aides): Andy, whose Mom is a librarian, and Scott, who does a dead-on Frank Sinatra imitation. (Based on the one time that I tested his knowledge, he seems to know every song that Frank recorded.) It wasn’t a late night. Both tables shut down prior to 11:00.

Mom, did you ever read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? I finished listening to it on the drive back from Manitowoc on Thursday. It’s a book that remains very popular 45 years after its initial publication, a fact which intrigued me. What is it about this book that makes it so enduring? I wondered. The answer: Betty Smith writes a very compelling coming-of-age story and her depiction of New York City in the 1910s provides a fascinating glimpse of that city’s history.

A Sunday evening postscript

Andy played soccer this afternoon. Matt’s team, which is the team that Andy will play on next spring, was short a player, and Andy was happy to fill in.

I did notice the article in the Warren newspaper about sidewalk replacement. We had a portion of our sidewalk replaced soon after we moved to Mayflower Drive. Our assessment by the city was $80 per square, if I remember correctly. We’d like to get our driveway replaced next spring. I’m sure that won’t be a cheap project.

I clipped the article about the Watson Home. I knew very little about the history of the place, so I found it informative reading. And unless it was shortly after we first moved to Warren, I don’t remember ever being inside the building.

The Buffalo Bills are turning into giant-killers, knocking off another undefeated team today. The mood is a little tense in Packerland after Thursday’s loss to the Lions. JoAnna wondered if Favre might be abusing drugs again, but the local sportswriters point to the Dorsey Levens injury, which left the Packers without a running game and puts more pressure on Favre to do it all. Brett looked like the greenest of rookies against the Lions. He was intercepted three times, but I saw at least three other passes that should have been picked off.

Andy was just demonstrating his dance moves, with Will Smith’s “Men in Black” on the stereo. He looked ready to strut his stuff for the girls. What a guy!